Welcome to Elderfield Blessings and Curses
Last updated: 2026-09-16 · 8 min read
Elderfield's status system is the one players get wrong most often, and the reason is that it is symmetrical. Curses take 10% per stack off one stat; blessings add 10% per stack to one stat; most of them cap at five stacks; and the same bath that washes the curses off washes the blessings off too. This page is the full list with exact numbers, followed by the two effects a bath cannot touch and the three that last until the Tax Man comes back.
Curses and blessings both work in ±10% per stack, most capped at 5 stacks. Taking a bath at home clears every non-permanent effect and fully restores HP and MP — but it clears your blessings at the same time, so bathing on the way to a fight you prepared for is a mistake. Two effects ignore bathing entirely: Heavy Eyelids (only sleep clears it) and Cat's Mystery (2 days, bath-proof by design).
How Stacks Work
Every curse and blessing applies a flat percentage per stack, and the percentage is always 10% except where noted. The default cap is five stacks, which means a fully stacked curse is a 50% penalty to one stat — not fatal on its own, and genuinely fatal when three of them are running.
The sources are what make this a system rather than an annoyance. Curses and blessings arrive from:
- Mining — the single most common source of curses. Long trips underground are how players end up with three or four stacks without noticing.
- Enemy attacks — several enemies apply a specific curse as part of their kit.
- Sleep events — going to bed rolls for an outcome, good or bad. Both the blessings and the curses on this page can arrive that way.
- God Shrines and moon events — interacting with a shrine and the midnight moon event can apply either direction.
- Paying or dodging the Tax Man — the only source with a fixed, predictable effect.
FIG. 01 — Effects arrive through events as well as combat. The message matters: some of them cannot be bathed off.
The Curses
Exact figures for every effect. Where a field is blank, the game does not state one.
| Curse | Stat it hits | Per stack | Max stacks | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Doom | Luck | −10% | 5 | Mining, enemy attacks, sleep events |
| Sickness | Attack | −10% | 5 | Mining, enemy attacks, sleep events |
| Weakness | Defence | −10% | 5 | Mining, enemy attacks, sleep events |
| Chaos | Magic Attack | −10% | 5 | Mining, enemy attacks, sleep events |
| Hex | Magic Defence | −10% | 5 | Mining, enemy attacks, sleep events |
| Dread | Agility | −10% | 5 | Mining, enemy attacks, sleep events |
| Fear | Hit Rate | −10% | 5 | Mining, enemy attacks, sleep events |
| Heavy Eyelids | EXP Rate | Down to 85% | 1 | Staying awake two or more days. A bath does not clear it — only sleeping does |
| Insomnia | All healing | −25% for two full days | 1 | Sleep events |
| Carrion | Crows eat more crops | +10% crop loss | 1 | Unpaid taxes. Lasts until the Tax Man returns |
| Blight | Crop quality and quantity | −10% | 1 | Unpaid taxes. Lasts until the Tax Man returns |
| Tax Plague | Attack and Magic Attack | −10% | 1 | Unpaid taxes. Lasts until the Tax Man returns |
The seven stackable curses are the ones that actually decide fights. Note that they hit different stats — a player with five stacks of Sickness is still fully agile, and a player with five stacks of Dread still hits hard. The pairing to fear is Weakness plus Sickness, which removes both your damage and your damage reduction at once, and that pair is exactly what a long mining trip produces.
The Blessings
| Blessing | Stat it boosts | Per stack | Max stacks | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Greed | Luck | +10% | 5 | Player spells, sleep events |
| Brutalism | Attack | +10% | 5 | Player spells, sleep events |
| Stubbornness | Defence | +10% | 5 | Player spells, sleep events |
| Zealotry | Magic Attack | +10% | 5 | Player spells, sleep events |
| Skepticism | Magic Defence | +10% | 5 | Player spells, sleep events |
| Daring | Agility | +10% | 5 | Player spells, sleep events |
| Panic | Hit Rate | +10% | 5 | Player spells, sleep events |
| Cat's Mystery | Evasion | +5% for 2 days | 1 | Talking to the Mysterious Cat from a news report. Not removed by bathing |
| Angler's Luck | Fish rate | +15% | 1 | Angler's Potion |
| Plenty | Sleep roll quality | +25% chance of a good roll | 1 | Paying taxes. Lasts until the Tax Man returns |
| Tax Boon | Defence and M. Defence | +10% | 1 | Paying taxes. Lasts until the Tax Man returns |
| Burgeoning | Crop quality | +5% | 1 | Paying taxes. Lasts until the Tax Man returns |
| Growth | Crop quantity | +5% | 1 | Paying taxes. Lasts until the Tax Man returns |
Two of these are worth going out of your way for. Angler's Luck at +15% fish is the single largest percentage in the table, and it is triggered by a potion rather than a random roll — which makes it the most reliable buff in the game. Cat's Mystery is bath-proof, so it survives the reset that wipes everything else, making it the one blessing you can bank.
FIG. 02 — The Tax Man is the only status source you control. Four blessings or three curses, and they last until he returns.
The Tax Man Effects
The Tax Man arrives on the road between the town and the farm on a repeating cycle demanding produce as payment, and the outcome is the only fully predictable status effect in the game. Pay, and you get a blessing; do not, and you get a curse.
| Outcome | Effect | Worth |
|---|---|---|
| Paid — Growth Blessing | Crop Quantity +5% | Direct farm output. Best if you are running the market |
| Paid — Burgeoning Blessing | Crop Quality +5% | Better than quantity: crop sell prices scale with quality tier, and quality also affects gifting |
| Paid — Tax Boon | Defence and M. Defence +10% | The combat one. Worth keeping deliberately before a boss |
| Paid — Plenty | +25% chance of good rolls when sleeping | The best of the four: it feeds the sleep event table, which is where blessings come from |
| Unpaid — Carrion | Crows eat 10% more crops | Stacks with the base crow loss, and a Ragged Scarecrow only offsets 20% |
| Unpaid — Blight | Crop quality and quantity −10% | The most expensive one if you sell your harvest |
| Unpaid — Tax Plague | Attack and M. Attack −10% | −10% to both damage stats, permanently until he returns |
The important structural point: these effects do not expire on a timer. They last until the next Tax Man visit, which means an unpaid tax follows you through every fight for the entire period. If you are short on produce, the arithmetic still favours paying — Tax Plague is worse than the crops are worth.
Effects That Break the Pattern
One entry does not fit the system at all and is worth calling out separately, because it is a trade rather than a buff: Gift of Whispers gives Crit rate +5%, EXP gain +10% and MP +50%, and takes Luck down by 100%. It comes from a random event involving the Black Goat, caps at one stack, and if your build depends on dice rolls — Mysteries, and anything Luck-touched — it is a net loss. For a pure combat or EXP run it is one of the strongest effects available.
How to Clear Them
| Method | What it removes | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Bathing at home | All non-permanent blessings and curses; fully restores HP and MP | Free — but it also triggers the world's resource respawn, so cleared areas refill |
| Soul Moon | Fully restores HP and MP and removes blessings and curses | Free, but it is a midnight moon event — you cannot schedule it |
| Sleeping | Clears Heavy Eyelids specifically | One night |
| Restore Potions | Curses | Consumable |
| Holy Water and certain foods | Can grant blessings instead of removing things | Consumable |
A rough priority for a player with several stacks: if the curse is Heavy Eyelids, sleep — a bath will not help. If it is Insomnia, wait it out — it is a two-day timer, not a stack. If it is a Tax Man curse, it does not clear at all until he returns. Everything else, bath.
FIG. 03 — An underground pool with the fishing minigame bar on screen. Mining is still the biggest curse source: the longer the trip, the more stacks you carry home and into the next fight.
The Bath Trap
This is the mistake that costs boss attempts. A player who stacks Brutalism and Stubbornness from sleep events, then baths "to be safe" before a boss, walks in with nothing. Bathing is intended as a reset, not a cleanse — it does not know the difference between the good and the bad.
The practical rule: bath when the curses are worse than the blessings, not before something difficult. Two blessings against two curses is usually a bath; four blessings against one stack of Doom is not.
The exception worth remembering is Cat's Mystery, which is explicitly not removed by bathing. It is the one blessing you can hold while resetting everything else.
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